MOODLE

Storyboard: Updated on 02/04/09
Complete


Innovation: MOODLE

Means of delivery: A combination of Audacity, Jing, and PowerPoint, exported as a Quicktime movie, and embedded on this page using the following code:

<embed width=656 height=496 src="http://www2.cmcss.net/~BedellJasonT/MOODLE.mp4">

Stage 1 – Need: Martin Dougiamas began work on MOODLE as a doctoral project. While MOODLE has since been used to fill other needs, Dougiamas originally began developing MOODLE in 1998, near the beginning of the movement for virtual learning environments. However, whereas many of the other early course management systems, such as WebCT and Blackboard, focused more on static transmission of data and functioned similar to data repositories, MOODLE was created for a different purpose. Dougiamas wanted to provide tools that “allow both teacher and learner to construct environments in their computer within which they can construct representations of their understandings of the subject and share them with others in a variety of ways” (Dougiamas, 1999). Moodle’s foundation was originally one of social constructivism that attempted to allow for more collaboration and construction of knowledge than other course management systems allowed. It was originally aimed at higher education even though I am advocating its use in secondary schools.

Stage 2- Research: The original research was done primarily by Martin Dougiamas himself. He was the lead thinker of this project and continues to play a leading role in the development and direction of MOODLE. The research is in a sense twofold: it involved his study of constructivism as a learning theory and its applications, his time as an administrator of a WebCT system which allowed him to see its limitations firsthand, and his quest to find an simple programming language (php) and to create an easy to use, intuitive user interface. Because MOODLE is open-source, research continues to be done by millions of users worldwide who endeavor to improve MOODLE for use first with their own students, then with the larger MOODLE community.

Stage 3 – Development: At this point, MOODLE was still largely in the hands of Dougiamas. Development began his preliminary work in 1998 and had produced a working model of MOODLE 1.0 in 2002. Through the central MOODLE implementation at http://www.moodle.org, further development has been done by the open-source community to improve MOODLE in all areas and MOODLE 2.0 is set to come out in early 2009.

Stage 4- Commercialization: Commercialization is interesting with MOODLE because there is little concern over financial gains. MOODLE’s source code is provided an open-source under the General Public License, which means that anyone can view or edit MOODLE as long as they too provide their source code. Most developers also provide their innovations and add-ons to MOODLE for free. They can almost all be downloaded from the MOODLE Module’s and Plugins database on the MOODLE website. However, worldwide, MOODLE Partners have sprung up that offer specialized Internet hosting specifically to allow for implementation of MOODLE at institutions that are not equipped to build and maintain their own MOODLE or that do not want to, These MOODLE Partners, such as Moodlerooms (http://www.moodlerooms.com) are for profit, but they do provide tech support, which is important for many institutions, and many also contribute back to the MOODLE community. For example, Moodlerooms heard from their clients that they wanted a course format that allowed for nesting of pages to provide a slightly more organized format. Moodlerooms developed this in collaboration with IBM and then provided it for free back to the MOODLE community. The Flexpage format is now one of the more popular course formats on MOODLE.

Innovation-Decision Process:
There are several stages in the innovation-decision process of MOODLE, as there are for all innovations. Developers and lead users first began to learn of MOODLE in 1999 even before it had an official name. Martin Dougiamas published a paper that explained the pedagogical foundations of MOODLE, namely social constructivism, as well as the basic framework that described how his course management system would work. In 2000, Dougiamas conducted a study with individuals of varying levels of experience in computing and Internet use. While all participants had some critiques, there were a number of aspects that made MOODLE immediately attractive to all. Its design had three simple features: easy to follow navigation, simple page design, and interactivity. In addition, MOODLE made it easy to harness the power of the Internet for education even for novice users through a relatively simple graphical user interface. Users do not need to have any experience with web design, programming, html code, or anything else. They can worry only about course design and not the technical elements. MOODLE was one of the first course management systems that was both easy to learn and use, and inexpensive. The first implementation of MOODLE was on its main website, http://www.moodle.org. This was a small course on Internet literacy. Since then, it has been implemented by thousands of schools, from individual classrooms to full universities (including the Open University in the UK which has several hundred thousand students), and used by millions of students and teachers. The decision to use MOODLE must be made by individual school districts. While the participants in the study all appreciated MOODLE, the question is whether is would benefit our school district. MOODLE is much less expensive than proprietary software, such as Blackboard. It is easy for teachers to learn and adapt to. Also, most importantly, MOODLE is completely customizable because it is open-source. It can be changed to meet the needs of our school district. Furthermore, new modules are constantly created by the MOODLE community and tech support is offered free of charge. MOODLE would vastly improve communication between teachers, students, administrators, and parents on all levels.

S Curve
MOODLE is still in a time of rapid change and development. Currently, it is still in the process of being widely adopted and the growth in still in the exponential stage. Therefore, the curve does not resemble the traditional S. Over the next few years, MOODLE will likely experience a continuance of rapid growth over the Internet followed by a levelling off period. Graph was made in Excel with data from http://www.moodle.org.


Innovators and Laggards: The innovators of MOODLE are Martin Dougiamas, the founder, and many members of the MOODLE community on moodle.org. These people, such as Helen Foster, Julian Ridden, Art Lader, and Tomas Lasic, among others, actively create new ideas and give them back to the community. In terms of the secondary school, the innovators would be those teachers most likely to take risks and try new things. Usually, they have had experience with teaching with technology or have graduated college recently and so are more adept at using modern technology. The laggards would be those more traditional teachers who rely on lecture, note-taking, and other old-fashioned teaching methods. There is nothing inherently wrong with those methods, but by themselves they cannot reach every student. There are two arguments that could help both camps. One, by providing resources and interaction, MOODLE can help meet the needs of the students and improve learning. Second, MOODLE, despite how full-featured it is, is rather easy to use. While there is a slight learning curve, anyone can become proficient in a matter of hours.

Critical Mass
The diffusion of MOODLE would work best if a centralized approach work taken. The reason for this is that to become proficient at using MOODLE will require training. The best way to do this would be to offer several days of in-service training for those interested teachers before the next school year commences, and then offer at least monthly sessions to help the teachers overcome any problems and help them to master the advanced features of MOODLE that are relevant to their classes. MOODLE can then be spread by word of mouth and phased in to become part of all teachers' repertoires over the course of 3-4 years. This training would have to be created, taught by, and evaluated, so a supervised approach would most likely result in best use of the software.
The key change agents will be those who are already respected as good teachers and who are willing to take risks and experiment with their teaching methodologies. These are the teachers who should be recruited for the pilot year and who will voluntarily want to participate when they see the potential that MOODLE has to improve instruction.
While MOODLE is close, it has not yet reached critical mass in the United States. It will soon be self-sustaining. Until that time, there are several things that can be done to help it become so. The first is to gain the support of the opinion leaders in the school by having them participate in the pilot. This will show the rest of the faculty that it has value to improve instruction. The incentive for use is that it greatly improves communication between all members of a school, most importantly students and teachers, and helps students to achieve more.

Need of the Innovation
There are many holes in the educational system that MOODLE can help fill, but its greatest strength is the increase in effective communication. For an institution whose goal is the betterment of people through the transmission of knowledge, knowledge itself is isolated in teachers, in administrators, in students. It is seldom shared effectively, and when it is, it is on a small relational or classroom basis. MOODLE has the ability to improve all facets of communication in a small. So, to demonstrate that, here is a brief video of four MOODLE courses that all meet specific needs within a high school environment.
The first course is a staff Intranet that is continuously under construction to better meet the needs of a school opening in the coming months. It uses the flexpage format to organize the information effectively. The goal is similar to that of Wikipedia in that all of the information possessed by any member of the staff will, ideally, be integrated for the betterment and edification of all to help the students. Two quick examples are the technology information page, which has tutorial videos and instructions on almost all of the school's technology, and the subject area pages. All of the subject area pages have discussion areas for collaboration that does not require time in-person and lesson plan banks to allow teachers to help each other when they have good ideas.
The second course is a course developed for a school library. While it may be thought that a library does not need a course because students cannot be forced to use it, the goal is to reach out to students by making the library more interactive. There are discussion forums for suggestions about books and materials to buy. Students can even give back to and communicate with the school by adding their own book reviews to a collective database. It is simple to do and can take the form of text, audio, or video reviews.
The third course is used with an 11th grade English course. Weeks are broken up into Modules. Students can access all of their assignments for the week at any given time, turn them in online and collaborate, view and use any necessary resources, and even look at the standards being covered to understand why topics are being covered.
Lastly, MOODLE can even be used to revolutionize professional development. It can be difficult to find time for teachers to stay after school for professional development. MOODLE can allow them to do it at their own pace and even has conditional activities now that can make completion of the course dependent on mastery of certain criteria. This course is a professional development course about MOODLE itself to help teachers learn to use it better. It demonstrates some of MOODLE's features that make it so interactive, such as forums, collective glossaries, cooperative groups, quizzes with immediate and customized feedback, real-time chats with the teacher or other students, embedded resources, and so much more. This is just the beginning. The real difference will be seen when it is effectively used with the students.

Conclusion

MOODLE can be used to improve all aspects of how a school operates. By improving communication channels, it strengthens relationships and improves rigor, both of which contribute to improved performance on measurable assessments. So, everyone wins. The schools get data that shows how well the students are doing and the students are more engaged and want to be in school. (Data is fictitious; used to demonstrate an idea.)

References

(2007, August 16). Background. Retrieved December 23, 2008, from MoodleDocs Web site: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Background
(2008, September 10). Online Learning History. Retrieved December 23, 2008, from MoodleDocs Web site: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Online_Learning_History
Dougiamas, M. (1999). Developing tools to foster online educational dialogue. In K. Martin, N. Stanley and N. Davison (Eds), Teaching in the Disciplines/ Learning in Context, 119-123. Proceedings of the 8th Annual Teaching Learning Forum, The University of Western Australia, February 1999. Perth: UWA. http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/tlf/tlf1999/dougiamas.html
Dougiamas, M. (2000). Improving the effectiveness of tools for Internet based education. In A. Herrmann and M.M. Kulski (Eds), Flexible Futures in Tertiary Teaching. Proceedings of the 9th Annual Teaching Learning Forum, 2-4 February 2000. Perth: Curtin University of Technology. http://lsn.curtin.edu.au/tlf/tlf2000/dougiamas.html